STARSTEM PIs Dr Mary Murphy and Prof Martin Leahy of REMEDI and TOMI at NUI Galway were two of the invited speakers at the nTRACK Project Open Day 2019 meeting in Cambridge, the UK on October 30th 2019. See the meeting agenda here. Approximately sixty invited researchers were in attendance. Participants were by and large engaged in research related to the nTRACK project.

nTRACK received funding from the same “Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Advanced Manufacturing and Processing, and Biotechnology” (NMBP-2017) EU work programme as STARSTEM. The project uses mouse, rat and sheep models and employs the diagnostic modalities CT, MRI, PET and SPECT, but not optoacoustic imaging (OAI).

  

Mary presented the AUTOSTEM (http://www.autostem2020.eu/) project which she coordinated. Her talk was titled: The AUTOSTEM Project – The development of a fully automated platform for the manufacture of stem cells for cell therapies. Watch this video to see the end-to-end platform in action http://www.autostem2020.eu/watch-the-actual-autostem-pipeline-in-action/

Martin’s talk  “NanoSTARS imaging for STEM cell therapy for arthritic joints- STARSTEM project” was well-received.

After each talk, an open discussion ensued. Research challenges were discussed and trouble-shooting occurred.

  

The nTRACK Project (www.n-track.eu, grant agreement No 761031) aims to develop a safe and highly sensitive multimodal Nanoimaging agent enabling non-invasive, quantitative and longitudinal stem cell tracking and whole-body biodistribution. The synthesis of nTRACK NPs and cellular labelling processes will be scaled up and will follow good manufacturing practice (GMP) requirements. A second goal is to establish a predictive model for early assessment of treatment effectiveness, based on short-term evaluation of the typical migration and biodistribution patterns of the stem cells. This predictive model could substantially improve the overall management of the disease and will transform cell therapy treatment from “one size fits all’ concept towards personalised treatment.